


Enough

by griever11



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Nightmares, Panic Attack, Romance, season 7 speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 15:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15440394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griever11/pseuds/griever11
Summary: She’s done playing cat and mouse with the FBI and she’s going to get her dumb, misguided, self-sacrificing husband who she's so desperately in love with out of prison so she can give him the tongue lashing he so rightly deserves for being a goddamned idiot.A journey through the 5 (and a little bit) months of Olicity's forced separation. A season 7 spec fic loosely based on the those spoilery photos of Felicity.





	Enough

_one_

She makes it through the harrowing days that follow her husband’s incarceration in a fog of grief and anger, barely keeping it together, only putting on a brave front for the boy she’s suddenly the sole parent of. The boy who haunts her every move, a constant resilient presence by her side every second of the day, like he’s afraid she’ll leave him too if he closes his eyes just for a second - a bitter reminder what Oliver’s done to them.

 

Oliver, who brought them together like blazing fire against individual grains of sand, melding them into their own version of _family,_ only to send them shattering them into jagged pieces of broken glass waiting to be further trampled on by the weight of his selfishness.

 

She agrees to most of ARGUS’ terms of protective custody, more for William’s sake than hers. Agrees to new identities and new a home - new _lives_ \- even when every atom in her body is screaming at her to keep fighting to take back her goddamned city - because above all else, she needs to keep William safe, and if this the only way to do so, she'll quietly acquiesce.

 

_“I was worried that I will become an orphan, but it’s okay, I have Felicity now.”_

 

His words, so calmly uttered what feels like eons ago, play on a loop in her head, over and over, because back then it had seemed like such an impossibility, but now - well. They’re just mocking her. Because yeah, he’s not technically an orphan, Oliver’s not _dead_ \- but he might as well be.

 

They uproot themselves a month after Oliver’s sent to Slabside, in the dead of night once all the arrangements are finalised. Diggle and Lyla drive the armoured truck that will take them to their new life, and for that she will eternally be grateful.

 

She doesn’t get to say goodbye to anyone else but it doesn’t matter. The still angry, still very hurt part of her soul blames _them_ for everything that transpired anyway. Having the Diggles with them to mark the end of all of the horror that has been the past month is more than enough.   

 

They travel in silence the entire way there, but the way William never lets go of her hand speaks volumes.

 

He only has Felicity now.

 

_two_

Much to her surprise, William takes to the whole ‘new identity, new life’ thing a lot better than she does.

 

“I’ve done it before, Felicity,” he tells her when she asks him one day. And then he hugs her, tightly like he knows exactly what she needs in that moment. “We’ll go home eventually. I know it.”

 

She doesn’t have the heart to tell him she’s not as convinced as he is, but hope is what fueled her - and Oliver, and their fight for justice - for so long, so she keeps the negativity to herself and allows William the luxury of hoping for the best. With the new pink streaks weaving through her still dyed blonde hair (she can’t let go of the blonde, it’s too much a part of her now), she starts trying to settle into their new normal.

 

The sleepy suburbia of Hope Springs is not unlike Ivy Town, with all the perfectly manicured lawns and always smiling neighbours. But thinking about Ivy Town makes her think of Oliver and their wonderful, amazing, albeit slightly too naive months away from the team and she nips _that_ train of thought right in the bud.

 

At first, they spend their time holed up at home, watching mindless TV and catching up on movies they missed out on while Diaz had been running rampant in Star City. Felicity also makes it a point to sit down with William a few hours a day to go through school work with him because that’s the responsible thing to do.

 

Or so she thinks.

 

It’s not like there’s a handbook on how to raise a kid who’s not your kid but is practically yours and make sure he won’t waste his smarts away while being held in protective custody.

 

In return, William walks her through the various recipes he’s learned from Raisa and his own mother, so very patient with her even as she messes up making pancakes for the tenth time in the space of a short week.

 

Mid-way through the month, she gets a job.

 

It’s not something they’d planned for - ARGUS had ensured they’d be fine financially - but Felicity doesn’t flourish well being cooped up in one place for too long. She needs to think and problem solve and _work_ and idling by with nothing to distract her from her completely fucked up situation makes her anger flare up at inopportune moments and it starts eating away at her bit by bit.

 

After she snaps at William for some stupid, inane reason two days in a row, she calls Diggle for help.

 

She’s on the verge of tears when she hears his voice, nearly losing it as she feels her hold over her emotions start slipping, fraying at the edges.

 

“I can’t do this, Dig,” she whispers into the burner phone, curled up in the corner of her bedroom in the middle of night, holding her knees to her chest. “I can’t do this here, alone. I miss him so much and I don’t know if he’s okay, and yesterday I yelled at William for leaving his shoes in the kitchen, which is stupid, because Oliver used to do that all the time, and it just made me think of Oliver and I just _miss_ him, John.”

 

She’s sobs through her babbling, barely registering his attempts at comforting her.

 

He does however tell her that Oliver’s fine, but he does so in that ‘I’m not telling you a few things, but you can trust me’ tone, so she knows he’s not _fine_ fine, but he’s... okay.

 

It’s enough.

 

For now.

 

“Do you think ARGUS will let me find some work?” she asks eventually, once her chest stops hurting and her voice stops shaking. “So I can do something with my time, you know? I’m going crazy here, John.”

 

He takes two days to get back to her, but in the end (after she threatens to encrypt all of ARGUS’ servers if they don’t) they agree that it’s in everyone’s best interest that she’s allowed to look for a job.

 

Nothing in tech, she decides, sitting with William in their tiny dining room, poring over the classifieds in the Hope Springs Tribune. Too on the nose, too risky.

 

“What about at a cafe?” William asks, pointing to a small ad near the bottom of the page. “You like coffee, and it’s not like they’ll ask you to cook gourmet meals at a cafe,” he adds with a smirk.

 

She circles the ad with a red sharpie and nods.

 

Waitressing does run in the family after all.

 

_three_

 She has a breakdown in July.

 

The world is truly that cruel to her - not that _that’s_ surprising after everything she’s been through in her relatively short life.

 

Just as she falls into a semi-comfortable (because none of this will ever be completely comfortable until she has Oliver back) routine with her job and taking care of William and just life in general, the nightmares begin with a vengeance.

 

The first time it happens, she jerks awake, drenched in sweat, heart racing as she tries to blink away the image of Oliver being stabbed by R’as’ blade from her mind’s eye. It’s a nightmare she’s had before, so she merely shrugs it off and grabs a glass of water, spending the rest of the night reading through various tech journals until the sun rises.

 

The next night she finds herself back in the gas chamber Damien Darhk had trapped her in, the toxic gas filling her lungs as she gasps for air. Oliver doesn’t get to her in time, doesn’t get her out of the chamber and all she can see is his lips moving silently behind the glass telling her he loves her.

 

When she wakes up from _that_ , she races out the front door and doubles over, hand over her heart, dry heaving. She fills her lungs with big gulps of fresh air, repeating to herself that it’s just a stupid nightmare and that she’s okay, and Oliver’s okay and Darhk is - traipsing through the time stream somewhere but Sara’s got a handle on him but everything is in fact,  _okay_.

 

She goes back inside and unearths Oliver’s old hoodie, the ratty green thing he insisted on wearing almost every day in Ivy Town to work out in. It’s one of the few things ARGUS allowed her to keep from her old life and she pulls it on, inhales the woodsy scent of Oliver and detergent and home and tries to fall back asleep.

 

It doesn’t help. She wakes up an hour later, a silent scream on her lips as Lian Yu blows up around her, leaving no one else alive.

 

Night after night, her subconscious tortures her. It’s Merlyn and the Undertaking and Prometheus and Slade and Darhk on rotation, every villain they’ve faced and conquered together, she faces in her nightmares alone. It leaves her shaken and off-kilter and she _hates_ it.  

 

So she inhales coffee by day _(thank you_ , new job), and by the time her shift at the cafe is over, she’s too wired to even think about falling asleep.

 

Her therapist would have a field day with this, that’s for sure.

 

She goes through her nightly routine like she’s _going_ to sleep, bids William goodnight as she retreats into her room. But then stays awake, jumpy and bleary eyed, mostly reading, or doing yoga, writing code for apps and programs that she might use in the future when all of this is over.

 

Anything to keep the monsters at bay.

 

Until the one night it all crashes down around her.

 

She doesn't know how or when it happens, but one minute she’s deep in lines of code, and the next she feels like she’s falling, jerked around, and there’s a deafening, blood-curling scream in her ear that sends chills down her spine.

 

A sharp pain slices down her side, and she’s cold, her fingers are numb, and Oliver’s dead, lying on the ground in a crumpled heap by her feet, his wedding ring glinting gold amidst the dark red of his blood. The pain that claws at her heart is so unbearable and _oh_ \- _she’s_ screaming. It’s _her_.

 

“Felicity, wake up, please wake up, _please_.”

 

William’s frantic voice cuts through her haze of despair and agony and slowly, _slowly_ , her consciousness breaks through the terror and she starts choking, gasping desperately for air.

 

“Call Dig,” she rasps, tearing herself away from William’s hands, flinging herself off the bed and into the corner of her room. There’s blood trickling down her side and she realises she’s knocked over her glass of water trashing around and a piece of glass has embedded itself in her side.

 

She can’t bear to look at William knowing that she’s the reason the fear is rolling off him in waves so she screw her eyes shut and fights through the panic bubbling in her blood. “Call John, please. I need help.”

 

_four_

 That night ends up being a turning point for them that summer.

 

William becomes more reserved and tentative, tip-toeing around her like he’s nervous he’s going to send her into another spiralling panic attack and that doesn’t sit well at all with her.

 

She hates that she’s let it get this far, that she’s just allowed ARGUS to dictate her every move and how she lives her stupid new life. But no more. She’s determined not to be a victim in all of this, panic attack notwithstanding, and she’s not going to be treated like some problem ARGUS and the FBI can just hide away until they get their heads out of their collective asses long enough to figure out how to fix their Diaz sized problem.

 

She’s Felicity goddamn Smoak, a vigilante herself for all intents and purposes, and for the better part of the last six years, just as responsible for taking down some of Star City’s most notorious criminals as the Green Arrow and his team is.

 

She’s not spending another minute sitting around waiting for ARGUS to tell her what her next move is, when she knows she’s capable of handling herself without their help.

 

And more than anything else, she’s done playing cat and mouse with the FBI and she’s going to get her dumb, misguided, self-sacrificing husband who she's so desperately in love with out of prison so she can give him the tongue lashing he so rightly deserves for being a goddamned idiot.

 

She starts with quitting her job.

 

And it ends, much to ARGUS’s chagrin - but she’s so done with them she absolutely does not care what they think, no offence to the Diggles - with her singlehadnedly gathering the entirety of Team Flash, the Legends (WIlliam almost faints in excitement when he realises they have a _spaceship_ , and they _travel through time_ ), and the aliens from Earth-38 (some are humans, Felicity’s sure, but by then her ragtag team of heroes have gotten so big she can’t keep track anymore) to finally, _finally_ end Diaz’s reign of terror on Star City.

 

 _five_  

The citizens of Star City and Central City start staging protests after Diaz’s downfall to fight for Oliver’s release. And then, just to help their cause, somehow, the White House gets sent entire dossiers of just how much good the Green Arrow and his team has done for his city.

 

Under insurmountable pressure and irrefutable proof, the President pardons Oliver and wipes his entire slate of alleged crimes clean.

 

Right down to the time he peed on that cop’s car.

 

The announcement is made on a Monday morning in October, five months after he first stepped inside Slabside, just shy of their first wedding anniversary.

 

It strikes her as she waits outside the prison with William, Diggle and Thea by her side, that she’s spent an almost equal amount of time _with_ Oliver and _without_ him during the first year of their marriage.

 

Not something she’s proud of, but it’s a lot better than the alternative.

 

Her heart skips a beat when she finally spots him, squinting against the glare of the morning sun at the figure walking towards them.

 

He exits the prison in the same clothes he wore when he walked in, thinner, leaner, paler and Felicity clamps a hand over her mouth, choking back a strangled sob.

 

He reaches out for WIlliam first, enveloping his son in a big hug, then Thea, and Diggle - and when he finally turns to her, it feels like her entire world stops spinning.

 

She’s shaking uncontrollably when he finally gathers her in his arms, feeling like she’s being crushed beneath the weight of everything she’s gone through in the last five months.

 

The stress of coordinating the attack on Diaz, keeping her emotions in check, putting on a brave front as she went toe to toe with ARGUS - it all slams into her at once and she collapses into his embrace, drawing from him the comfort and reassurance and love that she’s been so cruelly denied for almost half a year.

 

She's finally home. 

 

_and a little bit_

Thea whisks William away for a few hours after their bittersweet reunion on the pretext of catching up with her favorite nephew and wanting to regale him with tales of her cross country travels.

 

As she leaves, she glares sternly at Oliver and whispers a fierce “Fix this, big brother,” and lets the door slam shut to punctuate her point.

 

And so, finally alone in the temporary ARGUS safe house - their loft isn’t quite livable yet - they finally get it all out.

 

It’s not the knock down, drag out screaming match that she expects and after a beat of silence where Oliver looks like she’s about to crush his heart in her bare hands, she sighs, changes course and takes a step back.

 

“My greatest fear in life is losing you,” she starts by repeating herself. Wants to drive it over and over into his stupidly thick skull. “My greatest fear, Oliver. And you - you’re the one who almost made it come true.”

 

His face twists with grief. His hands captures hers and he laces their fingers together. “Felicity, _I’m so sorry_.”

 

And just like that, the rage she’s bottled up for so long spills from her lips, a litany of angry sentence fragments and unfiltered streams of consciousness echo around them, creating a vivid Jackson Pollock-like painting of the last five months of their life without him.

 

With every new revelation, his expression worsens and his eyes fill with tears, but he bears it all bravely, not making a single excuse for his decision.  

 

It’s rough and hard and and difficult and Oliver takes it on his chin as he allows her to flay him, metaphorically skinning the guilt off of him inch by inch, because they both know he deserves it. He may not have deserved prison - but this, this he can take.

 

Because they got married on a promise of together and forever, and with one fell swoop in a graceful arc like the arch of his beloved bow, he’d single-handedly delivered a blow so hard it nearly ruined them.

 

And in the end when she's done expressing every iota of disappointment she's harboured for the way he's done things, over a sigh, Felicity deflates and whispers, “But I love you, Oliver.”

 

He blinks at her, startled at her confession. “Felicity...”

 

“I love you so fucking much, Oliver Queen, and you have a lot to be sorry for and you’re going to be grovelling so hard for the rest of your life, but I love you. I _love_ you.”

 

Her fingers curl around the fabric of his shirt, twisting the material within her fists, pulling him down to her before she kisses him, pressing into him, sliding her lips over his with unbridled passion.

 

Her tongue slicks out to meet his, teeth nipping his bottom lip, recommitting his taste to her memories. When she pulls away, her eyes are blazing amd her heart is racing and god -

 

“I love you, and I miss you but _please_ -” Her voice cracks. “Please never leave us again.”

 

His hands travel up from her waist to cup her face, wiping her tears away with the pads of his thumbs. He leans down, touches his forehead to hers and kisses her sweetly, feathering his lips over hers softly, as gentle as he’s ever been with her.

 

He trembles over her, overcome with emotion like he can’t believe that he’s once again been given another chance at redemption. At putting the little shards of their family together again.

 

“For as long as I live, Felicity Smoak, I will never, ever leave you again.”

 

_ Fin. _

**Author's Note:**

> I... don't know what this is. 
> 
> But your thoughts are, as usual, much welcome. 
> 
> Twitter: @estheryam


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